


Moonlight

by gabrielledarling



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Cute, Fluffy, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sweet, Tomlex, soft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2018-12-27 02:12:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12071529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielledarling/pseuds/gabrielledarling
Summary: *UNFINISHED AND INDEFINITELY ON PAUSE*I was inspired to write about how Alex and Tommy's relationship would look to an outsider.This was supposed to be a page and a half of cute, fluffy Tomlex. But because I have no self-control, here's the first chapter.





	1. One

Harriet Pittman—grey hair, brushed back into a smooth bun, lines of wear around her eyes, the corners of her mouth—hovers in the doorway that separates the hall from the living room. She holds a wet rag spattered with grey-brown stains, the remains of dinner, but she doesn't look at it. Her eyes skitter from the white-stucco ceiling to the flower-patterned wallpaper to the floor.

"I couldn't stay."

That's his voice, the polite, brown-haired boy (man, she reminds herself, _man_ ). His earring had confounded her; he hadn't seemed the type.

"That's your reason? That's all you have to say?"

Alex's voice, her son's voice, spills out from the living room where the two of them—presumably—sit on the couch she'd offered their visitor for the night.

He'd knocked just before dinner. She'd yelled to her son, _will you get that, please, Alex, love?_   When he didn't answer, she'd left the potatoes and gone to get it herself. But Alex had heard her. He stood, frozen, hand on the open door's knob. The brown-haired boy—a man, she would learn later, at twenty-five years old—stood on the top step in the shadow of her family home.

"Well, for God's sake, Alexander," Harriet said, "Let him in, would you?"

Alex's head jerked in a sudden nod. The boy—man, the  _man_ —pursed his lips.

"S'alright," he said. "You don't hav' t—"

"Nonsense," said Harriet, turning to look at her son in admonition, but his face was white, and she felt a sudden apprehension. A sinking feeling developed in her chest. _Of course._

Harriet remembered the day her youngest son stepped onto the platform. It had been a hot, sunny Sunday. She'd taken her daughter, Lillian, and her eldest son, Robert. It was the first time anyone had seen him—her son, Lillian's older brother, Robert's little brother—since the war began, and hey'd bubbled with anticipation, a dizzying kind of excitement. Robert hadn't been permitted to serve in the war because of his legs, and Lillian, of course, at fifteen, couldn't have become a nurse (no matter how badly she'd wanted to), and so it was that only one of Harriet's children was taken from her. When V-E Day came, Harriet felt more than national pride, more than relief. It was a personal victory, she'd been blessed: all three of her children had made it through unhurt.

But when that pale face with hollowed-out cheeks had appeared in the crowd, she knew that Alexander had changed. He came to live with her, with them, like he'd done as a child, but he was cold now. He didn't speak often, and when he did, it was frivolous, cynical, about a film he'd seen or a girl he'd met. Often he came early in the mornings, drunk and falling over. When Lillian got married—only a year ago, now, she realized—he'd shown up intoxicated, laughing to himself, stumbling through the crowd. Harriet had pulled him away from the scene, spent the remainder of her only daughter's wedding in a dimly-lit loo, rubbing his back as Alex heaved into a toilet bowl.

In the last year, it had gotten better. He'd stopped going out with his mates, stayed in to help her with chores and dinner. But still, he didn't talk about the war and Harriet's anger grew. She wasn't angry at him, this stranger who moved about the house like her son, looked like her son, spoke like her son, but wasn't, wasn't her son; she was angry at the war, the machine that had churned her boy into pieces and spit him back out again, broken.

She understood the drinking in those moments, and it took every last prayer she could wrench out of her chest to keep herself from reaching for the bottle above the refrigerator.

But now, this. It's the first time she's seen a face, the face of someone whose childhood died out there, too. She doesn't know any names, and had never seen a photograph, but here is a boy—a man, a man—with a kind, impish face and ears that stick out, fringe falling into his hazel eyes. Was he a piece of the puzzle that was this new, broken Alex? Or was he just another boy Britain had fed to the war machine?

"S'fine," Alex said, staring down at the threshold. "Mum, this is Tom—"

"It's Thomas. Thomas Baird, ma'am," said the brown-haired man, stepping across the threshold holding out a hand. Alex stepped back, as if to keep those five feet between he and this ghost.

But Harriet took his hand. "Good to meet you, Thomas."

She'd invited him for supper, and he'd politely declined once before acquiescing to her demand of, _come now, Thomas, we'd love to have you_. They didn't have an extra room, an extra bed, or even an extra mattress, so Harriet offered him the couch. Once again, he declined.

"Just stay," Alex said, a tinge of irritation, of annoyance in his voice, and Thomas had nodded.

Harriet had stolen into the kitchen to clean. Alex had followed her, leaving Thomas in the living room by himself. When he coughed, loudly, impertinently, she looked up.

"He's not a friend."

Harriet looked up from the dough on the table. "What?"

"He's not a friend, Tommy. He's. I met him on the beach," said Alex, agitated. He ran a hand through his hair and it stood on end, glinting in moonlight coming through the kitchen's window.

"Ah," said Harriet. "In France."

Alex nodded, words failing.

"If you don't want him to stay," Harriet began, "I'd rather it's tomorrow morning I tell him. I just offered to put him up for the night, love, and the poor boy--"

Alex wrung his hands. "Yeah, alright, Mum! I get it. It's fine."

"Alexander, please. Tell me," asked Harriet. "Who is this boy?"

"Nobody, Mum," Alex said, anger dying in his cheeks. He kissed her on the temple, unsmiling. "Goodnight, Mum."

Now, the hallway is dark. Harriet leans against the wall, absently twisting the wet tablecloth in her hands.

"I couldn't stay."

Thomas' voice is soft and gentle. Not the kind of mate Alex would have befriended before the war. Harriet stares at the ceiling. She's used to checking on Alex in his sleep, for nightmares and the like, and so feels little to no guilt about listening this.

"That's your reason?" Alex's voice is bitter, impatient. "That's all you have to say?"

Harriet's heart beats quickly in her chest.

"I missed you."

"Well, fuck," says Alex, and Harriet startles, because she's never heard that word from him sober, and yet it rolls off his tongue like second nature. "Good for you."

"You can't be angry with me," says Thomas, as if trying to convince both Alex and himself. "You don't get to be angry with me. I thought you didn't want to see me again."

"Bullshit! You knew I wanted— _needed_. You—"

_"You said you didn't want me!"_

Harriet's heart pounds in her chest. She feels, suddenly, like an intruder. Their words sound—almost—like a lover's quarrel.

Quietly, Alex says, "I wanted you."

"And now?"

Harriet steps back, hands sweating. She'd been wrong: this was something she wasn't meant to hear, shouldn't hear. There's no more talking, and the fear rises up in her throat like a lump, the way it did when she cried. She takes another step, and the rest of the living room comes into view.

Her son is wrapped around this boy, arms around his waist, the boy's hands around his neck—his _neck_ —and this boy, this strange boy with prominent ears and hazel eyes, is kissing her son with surprisingly animalistic ferocity. And Alex is kissing him back.


	2. Chapter 2

Harriet can remember the last time she'd felt so shaken, heartbeat in her throat, hands clenched into fists, cold as ice and clammy. She can remember the last time she felt so terrified. She can remember it like it was yesterday. She'd been standing in the doorway of the shop across the street from home. Just across the street. Clouds had been passing overhead, shadows throwing the sunny street into temporary greyness. The loss of color lasted seconds, sometimes a minute.

She'd held a shopping bag in her hand, weighed down with her purchase. She'd looked back into the shop, smiling at the owner, turned back toward the street, where she'd last seen her sons, Robert and Alex, sat on the bench like gentlemen, examining the clouds.

She can remember it in a sequence of flashes. First, the flash of blonde hair. Robert, standing in the middle of the then-unpaved street, little fist and finger pointed to the sky. Then, the flash of headlights. She remembered the feeling: her heart stopping, her mind going blank. Alex stepping out beside his brother, and the out-of-control automobile zig-zagging down the street, sending tiny rocks flying--

She'd lunged for them, then. Her shopping, which had contained a merrily-painted clay pot, crashed to the floor in its bag, and in a moment, had cleared both of her sons from the street.

Neither of them had been bothered. Neither of them had even noticed how close they'd come.

But she had.

Harriet was fifty-five years old. She knew the world in which she lived. She knew what it did to homosexuals. She knew what the Bible as well as anyone, anyone who wasn't a priest, and she knew the law, and maybe, maybe it was all just a single, independent incident, a mistake, like the time Alexander had he wouldn't finish secondary school, just a mistake, just a mistake--

But Harriet had seen it. She'd seen it all. She'd been there at dinner when Thomas had asked for Alex to pass the beans, she'd seen his face. She watched the in-curve of his shoulders, the way he stood over Thomas, around Thomas, like a guardian, a protector. A soldier.

Harriet wrapped her arms around her own shoulders and walked into her bedroom. She closed the door and sat down on the left side of the empty bed. She reached into the small, bedside cabinet and took out her Bible. Carefully, she flipped through the pages until she found it.

She read it over and over and over again, the fingers on her right hand tapping restlessly on the worn-smooth leather, ears ringing. She didn't know what she was looking for. A word, maybe. 'Loophole' was too strong an expression. An article, a verb, a pronoun. Something she may have overlooked or missed. Something that would reassure her, some small allowance that would permit her to read it in a different light. Something that would allow her to look at her son and not feel like he was suddenly going to be pulled away from her in a flash of headlights.

Harriet snapped the little book shut. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled through her nose. Of course. It had to happen like this, she thought. All three of her children had survived the war. It was only fair that one would be damned in this way.

As soon as the thought entered her mind, she pushed it away.

Harriet lay down on her bed, pulled the quilt up to her chest, and crossed her arms. The white stucco ceiling stared back, stagnant and eternal and cold. She would try to sleep, but would be unable to do so. All she could do was wait for the morning.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again, apologies for such a short chapter! I'm a busy college student and writing small bits at a time is how I stay un-stressed and interested in my pieces! :)

Alex woke before the sun. He'd drifted in and out of an uneasy drowsiness, staring at the fragile face just inches from his own. He'd watched Tommy's porcelain nose, his breakable lips, his dark, fanned-out lashes with an almost leisurely indulgence, but his eyes never moved from that face. 

Until the first tinge of sunlight came through the curtains, casting the living room in his childhood home in a pale yellow light, throwing their too-close-but-not-quite-touching bodies into sharp relief against the deep green sofa. When Tommy's pale cheek began to blaze with sunlight, Alex threw himself up, away, off of the sofa. He felt a fog settle over his brain, a groggy contrast to the way he'd felt lying next to Tommy on the sofa all night.

Every inch of his body felt alive. Every nerve, every cell, tingled. Tommy was here, Tommy was inches away, and Alex's body didn't know how to be anymore. 

"Morning."

Alex turned too quickly. His head throbbed once, twice.

"Mum," he said.

Harriet pursed her lips, arms crossed over her well-worn blue bathrobe. Her eyes strayed to the sofa behind where Alex stood, knees apart, as if to block incoming fire with his body.

"How's he doing?"

"Fine," Alex said. 

Harriet's eyes were wide, her eyebrows scrunched up to make squiggly lines in the middle of her forehead. It was the way she looked at his brother, Robert, who'd been in an accident as a child and used a rickety, wooden wheelchair. It was the way she'd looked at him ever since he'd come back from the war. It was worry, yes, that was the eyebrows. But the eyes: they meant fear.

Alex's head throbbed.

"Are you alright, Alexander?"

"I'm fine," Alex said. 

Harriet uncrossed her arms, then crossed them again. "Would you help to make breakfast, please?"

Alex nodded.

***

Sausages sizzled on the stove.

Alex's hands were greasy and smelled of meat. He wore a ridiculous apron, pink and peppered with flowers. Since he'd come home, his mother's spare had become his apron. With nobody to impress, and no family, other than his mother, living at home to see it, Alex wore the apron shamelessly.

"Is he still sleeping?"

Alex paused. "Dunno," he said.

Harriet raised her eyebrows. "Check, then, would you?"

Alex set down the three knives he'd removed from the drawer and crossed the kitchen, taking note of the wet rag his mother was wringing absently in her hands. The living room was bathed in light: a slanted ceiling, a small TV, an oval-shaped rug, and the soft, deep-green couch, upon which lay--

Nobody.

Alex's jaw went slack, mouth falling open in a little o. He crossed the room, threw back the blanket, as if expecting Tommy to be hiding underneath, but there was nothing. Nobody.

Tommy was gone.

Alex stood up slowly, his chest seeming suddenly to ache.

"Alexander?"

Harriet has stepped into the living room, a plate of sausages in her mittened hands.

Alex didn't turn around. "Gone."


End file.
